Don't know your local paper?

No such place as ‘away’

MANDURAH council plans to solve its landfill problem by sending 230,000 tonnes of mixed waste each year to the Kwinana Strip to be burnt.

Planners must feel relieved that the City’s rubbish will be sent away.

The 8500 residents Medina, Calista and Leda are not relieved at all; waste that includes paper, cardboard, wood, plastic bottles, packaging and batteries will be burnt 24/7 three kilometres upwind from their schools and houses.

The thousands of workers on the Kwinana Strip won’t be happy either.

We know that these incinerators do emit highly toxic pollutants, admittedly in small amounts but humans are turning out to be more vulnerable than we thought.

These toxins have turned up thousands of kilometres from the incinerators that produced them. There is no place called “’away”.

Incineration would perhaps be understandable if there were no other options, but there are.

Our community gives lip service to reduce, re-use and recycle; our communities recycle less than 10 per cent of our waste.

Yet places such as San Francisco recycle up to 90 per cent of their waste, creating many jobs in the process.